AMA: I'm Courtney Youngblutt, Xplan Design Consultant and efficiency expert, Ask Me Anything!

Hi Lisa, I love these questions! Thanks for posting.

Is there a way to send an automated templated email to a client on their Birthday?

Absolutely! When automating routine tasks such as this, Scheduler is your best friend! I’ve provided high level steps for you below and a link back to the Community where you can find step-by-step instructions.

1. Create your email template
1. Use xmerge code to personalise the content
2. Create an advanced search criteria 
1. There’s actually criteria specific to birthdays, look for Key details| Birthday and set it to between 0 and 0 days to search for today's birthdays
3. Set up a schedule
1. Set the schedule to use your search criteria to search for clients with a birthday today
2. Set the schedule to send your email template
3. Schedule it to run daily at your preferred time
4. Don’t forget to enable the schedule for it to run!

Check out this article in the Iress Community: Best Practice: Client Birthdays 

📲Instead of an email…..what about sending a birthday SMS?

Quarterly reports can be automated in a similar way to the birthday email above using Scheduler.

1. Decide on your reports
• You could create an xmerge report pack or use your preferred reports direct from Portfolio
2. Create your email template
• Use xmerge code to personalise the content
• Link your xmerge or portfolio reports to the email template
3. Create an advanced search criteria 
• This is really up to you - decide on what clients you’d like to send the report to and align the criteria accordingly
4. Set up a schedule
• Set the schedule to use your search criteria to search for clients who you want to send quarterly reports
• Set the schedule to send your email template
• Schedule it to run quarterly or at your preferred time
• Don’t forget to enable the schedule for it to run

The key to achieving the greatest efficiencies with this automation is to trust your data. Make sure you have robust routine processes in place, ensuring key client and portfolio data is accurate and up to date.

SMS reminders for appointments

The most efficient way to send SMS and Appointment reminders is to use a diary template that has your email or SMS template linked to it. That way, the email or SMS can be set to automatically be sent out based on how many days it is until the appointment occurs. You’ll need to have an account with a third party SMS provider and complete some set up in Xplan. You’ll also need to ensure your clients have an SMS email address entered.

Ordering task lists by for priority 

This is absolutely possible! Are you using the new task hub? I hope so, it’s a new(ish) favourite feature of mine. In the new task hub you can sort your tasks by a variety of options, including priority:

From the classic tasks screen you can simply click on the column heading to sort by priority (If priority isn’t visible in your list of column, use the settings cog to the right of the tasks heading to select which columns you’d like to see.